Georgia Tech controls second half, beats Virginia to advance at ACC tournament

“Playing in space is just so different than what we did in the first half, and sometimes you have to open the floor up, and to be honest with you, we quit calling a lot of plays, and we just played in space, and guys were just making good decisions.

“When we’re on our game offensively, we’re tough to guard because we’ve got guys that can play in pockets, two on the ball and things of that nature, and then when we do switch, we do a good job of attacking close-outs and finding buy on the inside, so just really proud of our guys and things that they did.”

Tech was led Wednesday by Duncan Powell, who scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half. Baye Ndongo recorded his ninth double-double in the past 11 games, and 13th this season, with 16 points and 10 rebounds. Point guard Nait George flirted with a triple-double, finishing with 13 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists.

The double-doubles by Ndongo and George gave Tech its first-ever pair of double-doubles in an ACC tournament game.

The victory was the first for Tech over Virginia since Jan. 9, 2016.

Tech now faces a Duke team which has won eight in a row and beat Tech 82-56 in McCamish Pavilion on Dec. 21. The Blue Devils are led by ACC player-of-the-year Cooper Flagg and are considered a favorite not only to win the ACC tournament, but the national championship next month.

“Duke is a team that obviously they’re different,” Stoudamire said. “They’re long. They’re athletic. I look forward to the game, though, to be honest with you. At the end of the day, the one thing I do know going into this game is that we’re playing our best basketball of the season. If we weren’t, maybe I wouldn’t feel the way I do, but I feel as confident as I’ve ever felt about this group of guys.

“It’s going to be a task, but we’ll go in there, and we can’t fear them. We’ve got to do the things that we need to do. It’s a challenge, but I think that we’re all looking forward to that.”

On Wednesday, Virginia made only three of the first 10 shots it threw up, but two of those were from long range. The Cavaliers’ lone two came courtesy of Andrew Rohde’s runner in the lane that put the Cavaliers up 10-8 six minutes into the contest.

Tech went nearly nine minutes at one point in the first half without making a field goal, yet found itself down only 19-16 after an Ndongo layup and a one-handed, putback slam by him with 4:40 on the clock. Lance Terry’s 3-point shot, 64 seconds later, got the Jackets within 22-19.

After Ndongo got Tech within 22-21 with a long hook shot from the right block, Isaac McKneely drained his third 3-pointer of the half to extend the margin back to four points, at 25-21. But the Jackets scored the final four points of the half, two of which came from the free-throw line out of the hands of Powell with 0.1 seconds on the clock, to knot the score at 25-all going into the break.

“It was real big,” Powell said of the final play of the half that got him to the line. “It gave us the opportunity to go into the second half 0-0 pretty much. Me and (George) got a good chemistry. He’s found me a couple times throughout the year on this, so I give him a look, he sees one of the guys behind me, he just puts it in the pocket. I felt him fouling me before I went up, so I just knew to throw it (toward the basket).”

A 9-3 run started the second half for the Jackets, who went up 33-28 on a Powell putback. Virginia came right back with a 7-2 to tie the score at 35-35 on Elijah Saunders’ two-handed fast-break dunk.

Tech came right back with a 7-0 spurt of its own and eventually took a 49-39 lead on a Powell layup with 8:47 left. Virginia never recovered as Tech built a 13-point lead with a little less than three minutes to play.

McKneely scored 27 points for Virginia, which ended its season at 15-17.